Replacing the McLeod House: Sensitive Design in a Transitional Neighborhood
Change is afoot everywhere I look in my neighborhood. It comes as no surprise that 21 Boston is the elephant in the room. It is not simply a big project. With 474,000 square feet, half of which dedicated to 325 residential units in three seven story towers, it is huge. Capitalizing on the absence of the surface parking that dominated the old Safeway site, Runberg Architecture Group’s description of the massive project as prioritizing “the pedestrian experience by preserving the character of its distinct neighborhood,”{i} almost feels tongue in cheek. The new house, whose architects shared the rendering shown below, is located just around the corner where Crockett meets Warren across from the East Queen Anne Playground. It meets the description better.
Designed by Andrea Ermolli of Stephen Sullivan Designs, the new two-story three-bedroom house nestles into the western and northern edges of the tiny lot which was scraped down to street level last May (2023). Turning the house to face Warren Avenue – new address is 2700 Warren Ave. N. – and setting it back into the lot’s northwest corner acknowledges and respects the lovely playground and wading pool diagonally across the street.
The rendering is interesting because it calls out the tree the architects are proud to save, but it omits the surrounding buildings except the home to the north of the new one. The two houses are owned by the same people.
Rather than reaching for the sky as so many of our newer ‘filing cabinet’ neighbors do, the Ermolli-Sullivan design reads low to the land with a witch’s cap roof that weighs it down. The low and wide spread of the roof line reflects the effect the architect appears to seek here. The pairs of second story windows scrunched between two belly bands also help the house hug the land while the string of windows along the south facing elevation suggest brightly lit first story spaces and high ceilings. There is no doubt that the south facing windows on the first story will provide a flood of light even in dark February afternoons; however, the expression of high first story ceilings reflected in the very high belly board under the upstairs windows is a likely illusion. There are clear echoes in the Warren Avenue house of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early Prairie School designs which also found expression on Queen Anne in the Black House (now destroyed) and several other homes on W. Prospect St. and Kinnear Place that involved Andrew Willatsen who apprenticed with Wright in Illinois.
Looking northeast: rendering of house at Newton and Warren now under construction—Courtesy Stephen Sullivan Designs
Gee, what holds it up? A huge steel I-beam hidden behind wood supports south side of the house. Photo: Queen Anne Historical Society. 10/11/23
While significantly larger than the new house in Queen Anne, the massing of the central pavilion of the 1901 Henderson House by Frank Lloyd Wright provides strong evidence of how the early Prairie Style may have influenced Stephen Sullivan Design. The bands above and below the second story windows along with the broad low lines of the roofs also find repetition in the modern Queen Anne example. Ironically, both the McLeod and the Henderson houses were designed in the first decade of the 20th century.
F. B. Henderson House, Elmhurst, Illinois - 1901- Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo: R. McNees, 2006.
Dramatically, the apparent[ii] use of clapboard siding below the upstairs windows and cedar shakes in the second story matches so many of the Craftsman and other early 20th styles that mark Seattle. My own 1907 house is a good example. If I am reading the rendering correctly, the feature suggests that the designers intended to create an anachronism that blends with the historic character of the neighborhood. If it turns out that the entire building is clad in clapboard, the effect wouldn’t be significantly different. The simple classic feel of the doorway underscores the design’s anachronism. The anachronisms are not only aesthetic. Although heat pumps will heat and cool the house, solar panels are not planned. The architects assure us though that the roof is solar panel ready. This means that at least some of the new house’s energy needs could come from non-renewable fossil fuels.
For historic preservationists who believe the greenest house is a standing one, tossing out the wood, plaster, lath, glass, and concrete of the McLeod House, while replacing it with new wood and other construction materials to build a house of approximately the same size is ecologically and environmentally unsound. We should be preserving historic fabric not sending it to the landfill. Hard as it is to forgive the new owners of the site for tearing down Marilyn McLeod's turn of the 20th c. bungalow (shown below), I am grateful that the new property respects the scale and materials of the historic working-class neighborhood, where Marilyn and her bus driving husband Art, who died in 2004, raised six children.
Marilyn, who lived at 120 Newton for sixty years, moved to a retirement home before her 90th birthday. Indeed, she turned 92 on August 22, 2023.[iii] Like so many of Queen Anne’s east west running streets, for most of the 20th c. shallow lots on Newton favored small houses for working class people. John Gessner who was made famous by hosting visitors to the Washington State Coliseum (today’s Climate Pledge Arena) at the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, told me in an interview before his death in 2015, that he grew up next door to Marilyn and Art’s and that his mailman dad worked out of the post office on Boston St. It’s the one-story brick building on the alley facing the 21 Boston behemoth!
Marilyn and Art McLeod’s house ca. 1970. Courtesy Marilyn McLeod.
The McLeod house before demolition. Looking northeast. May 2023. Photo: Martha Fleming.
Demolition. Looking north. May 23.2023. Photo: Queen Anne Historical Society
Demolition. Looking west. May 23, 2023. Photo: Queen Anne Historical Society.
ii. I chose to use the word ‘apparent’ here because the rendering is not clear. I’ll have to wait for the house to go to be sure.
iii. Email dated August 25, 2023 from Marilyn McCleod’s former neighbor on Newton St.